Many devices commonly found in homes, offices and other settings are able to communicate with other devices over local area, wide area and other networks. In addition to conventional computer systems, many different types of televisions, television receivers, audio/video components, video game players, home appliances and many other devices now communicate using digital networks.
This connectivity has enabled a new generation of applications and other benefits to consumers. Recently, for example, consumers have expressed significant interest in “place shifting” devices that allow remote viewing of television or other media content at locations other than the viewer's primary television set. Place shifting devices typically packetize and transmit media content over a network to a computer, phone or other remote device that can play back the packetized media stream for the viewer. In addition to placeshifting, many other media, control and other networked applications are enjoying similarly widespread consumer interest.
Challenges frequently arise, however, in establishing communications between networked devices, particularly if the communicating devices are not located on the same physical network as each other and/or if the transmitting device does not have a priori knowledge of the receiver's network address. To establish a media placeshifting session over a network, for example, a media player client typically contacts a content-providing server over the network to establish a streaming connection for the placeshifted media content. This can be a challenge if the client does not know where to find the server on the network. Similar issues can occur in establishing connections for video game players, audio/video components, home appliances and/or many other devices as well.
While various forms of mediation have been used to exchange address information and thereby establish connections between clients and servers on different networks, such services have exhibited a number of disadvantages. If the mediating service is provided on the Internet, for example, the service will typically be unavailable to environments where Internet connectivity is interrupted or unavailable for any reason. Further, as home and other networks become increasingly complicated, Internet-based mediation services may be unable to distinguish between addresses provided by clients and services that are located behind a common router or gateway, thereby limiting the usefulness of the service.
It is therefore desirable to create systems, devices and/or methods for reliably and conveniently establishing connections between clients and servers across a network. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.